Romanian national who was beheaded in a bloody assault on Friday of a UN regional office in Mazar-I-Sharif, northern Afghanistan, was a UN international functionary. The Romanian had been working in Afghanistan for nearly two years, and had no diplomatic career in Romania. The Romanian Foreign Affairs Ministry on Saturday confirmed that Filaret Motco was among the victims of the Mazar-i-Sharif incident.

Filaret Motco was working within the Political Affairs Department of the UN office in Mazar-i-Sharif. He had also participated in UN operations in Kandahar, Tajikistan, the North Caucasus, Chechnya, Kyrgyzstan and in several other operations led by international organizations, said the source.
Seven UN staff members and five Afghan protesters were killed in the attack. Demonstrators were protesting the burning of a Koran by a pastor in the United States.
Out of the nearly 2,000 personnel of the UN Mission in Afghanistan, nearly 80 percent are Afghan nationals, and the remaining are foreigners, some 20-30 percent of whom are Romanians, most of them employed as security guards. Their employment contracts are not intermediated by the Romanian state, but by specialist private companies. Information with the Romanian Foreign Ministry (MAE) as of Friday evening indicates that six victims would have died in an explosion at the UN office. Read the entire article here

Filaret Motco was born in 1967 in Romania. As a young man he attended a military academy, before attending graduate programmes in international relations in Moscow and law in Bucharest.

Filaret’s quest for a life working in the realm of foreign policy led him to a series of jobs, first with Romania’s army then with Romania’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then with the OSCE in Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and finally with UNAMA in Afghanistan. Filaret joined the United Nations in Afghanistan in 2006, serving as a governance officer in Kandahar. In 2008, he rejoined UNAMA as a political affairs officer.

Filaret struck those who knew him as energetic and kind. Colleagues describe a sharp thinker with a bubbly and friendly personality who got along with everyone. Filaret is survived by his mother.

2 April 2011 – The top UN envoy for Afghanistan, Staffan de Mistura, today returned to Kabul from the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif, accompanying the bodies of seven colleagues killed in yesterday’s attack on the UN’s regional operations centre.

Three international staff and four international security guards were killed when a demonstration against a recent burning of the Koran in the United States turned violent and hundreds of people over-ran the UN centre.

The family members of the international staff have been notified by the UN. UNAMA is now in a position to release their names: Joakim Dungel, a human rights officer, from Sweden, Lt Col Siri Skare, from Norway, was a military liaison officer with the mission and Filaret Motco, from Romania, was a political officer.

UNAMA is not yet in a position to release the names of the four international security guards, who were from Nepal, who were also killed in the attack.

“Local police were caught “by surprise” and failed to stop the crowd, while the UN’s own guards were helpless because they had orders not to fire at civilians, de Mistura said Saturday, according to a transcript of his remarks published on the United Nations’ web site.”

A German national has died of his wounds in a hospital in Afghanistan’s northern Balkh Province as Taliban step up their attacks against foreign troops in the country.

Local police officials say the aid worker was on his way from Khulm district to the city of Mazar-i-Sharif when gunmen attacked his vehicle.

He was taken to a military hospital in the German army base.

“Yesterday at around 4:30 p.m. (1200 GMT), two unknown armed motorcyclists shot a German national as he was on his way from Khulm district (Balkh Province) to the city of Mazar-i-Sharif,” AFP quoted Balkh deputy police chief Abdul Rauof Taj as saying.

“He was taken to a German-run hospital in Mazar city by police. We have been informed that he died in the hospital today,” the police official added.

The attackers also injured his local translator who was traveling with him.

Foreign and local aid workers have been increasingly targeted by the Taliban this year. Taliban militants have claimed responsibility for the killing. Please see the entire article here

for negligence after stepping on a landmine resulting in an immediate below the knee amputation in an area previously cleared by and certified clear of landmines by Ronco Consulting.

The United Nations board of inquiry found that Ronco failed to find the mine that injured Mr Fartham as well as three other mines.

The complaint states that Ronco Consulting, acting through it’s agents and/or employee’s, breached it’s professional duty of care to Fantham and did not exercise the reasonable care and skill expected of professional mine clearance companies.